Tag: decor

I had a very pleasant surprise when I ripped up the flooring in the hallway and living room. It was this manky engineered wood stuff – some of it can look good, I know, I have it in the bedroom, but this was crappy – and I was expecting to just find sheets of plywood underneath, like when I pulled up the carpet in the bedroom. Continue reading “The Flat Saga Rumbles On”→

I recently took a week off to work on my flat. There is so much to be done, but I’m gradually chipping away at the list (literally, in some cases) and progress is being made, albeit at a very slow pace.

One thing I really wanted to finish last week was stripping the living room wallpaper. I’ve stripped many rooms in my time, and it’s never taken longer than a day before. This room, however: this room is my nemesis. I thought I’d somehow lost the ability to strip paper, until a builder came over, took one look at the walls and said “This must be hell to strip.” Continue reading “Well, I got some stuff done…”→

There is so much still to be done in my flat that I can’t even remember all of it, so I’m writing this post as a reminder to myself about all the things I need to do.

I’m about to take a week off to try to get some of it done (although by the time you read this it’ll already be the week after that) so hopefully this list will get a bit shorter. We’ll see. Continue reading “The Flat List”→

I’ve been renovating my flat since I moved in four years ago. It’s not even nearly finished. It’s exhausting and exciting and all sorts of other words I can’t currently think of because my brain’s so focused on waiting for an email from the builder who came over earlier today, made a sucking noise through his teeth and gave me such a long list of things which need to happen that I can only remember about 50% of them.

Some people feel the need to “keep up with the Joneses”, buying bigger fridges and sports cars and filling their houses with the latest tech. Others buck current trends, preferring to demonstrate their allegiance to counter-culture with objects that the Joneses wouldn’t consider worthwhile.

And even if the decision to buy specific stuff isn’t as considered as those examples, we still define ourselves by our surroundings, especially if we’ve chosen them.

I lived in private rented accommodation for most of my twenties and it wasn’t always fun. If you get a good landlord, it’s great, but often they’re demanding or just downright horrible.

One of the main things I disliked was that you’re not allowed to put pictures up or paint the walls. This seems a bit draconian, even if I do sort of understand why it’s a rule. I get that you don’t want to have to redecorate every time a tenant moves out, but at the same time staring at magnolia walls that someone else painted gets old very quickly.

So I came up with a solution: Saris. Any long sheets of material will do, but I found saris are a particularly useful one, because they tend to be cheaper than buying metres upon metres of fabric, and they’re guaranteed to have pretty patterns sewn on. Plus, they’re not too heavy and if you use them as curtains you can still see a little bit of light filtering through, which is nice.

If you’re not allowed to nail things into the wall, use drawing pins on the ceiling instead. I can pretty much guarantee that, as long as you remove them when you move out, no one else will ever know they’re there. And most ceilings will take a drawing pin pretty well, as long as you push it hard enough. You can create a nice tent effect by tying the ends of the saris around the wire that hangs down for the light, which is usually in the middle of the room. Here are some pictures of my old apartment for inspiration: